The Imperceptible Immigrant

Synchronicity

March 3, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

A couple of posts back I was musing upon the permanence/impermanence of things – including those items of domestic appurtenance with which we surround ourselves.

My last post concerned the domestic refurbishments/renewals we have recently effected to enhance our living spaces.

What odds then that this next post must needs concern a matter that touches on both of those last two topics. As the saying goes in London (on the subject of the London omnibus):

”You wait fifteen minutes and then three come along at once!”

Last weekend The Girl flew off to Prince George (for non-Canadians: in BC but way up north and still in the middle of winter) for a work event. She did not return until late on Wednesday evening.

The day before her return I had, in the morning, attended my regular fitness class – and had upon my return home made myself a cup of coffee, the which I was enjoying whilst checking my emails at the very peninsula in our kitchen at which I am writing this missive.

All of a sudden there was an almighty crash from somewhere close at hand, though I was unable to ascertain immediately whence the sound had emanated. Naturally I at once set off around the house to see if I could discover the cause of this loud report. The Master Bedroom was clear, but when I entered the en suite bathroom I came face to face with this:

Wow! The inner fixed glass screen of our bath/shower had shattered into a gazillion fragments, most of which had fallen into the bath. There followed an extensive and delicate operation to remove all of the glass debris from the room. Naturally it had gone everywhere.

The very next thing to do was to question the InterWebNet as to how such a thing might have happened. We had the shower screen installed when we renovated the house in 2017, so it is not that old. Google informed me that such happenings are not exactly rare – though the odds of being hit by flying glass whilst in the shower are apparently a fair bit less than those of being struck by lightening.

There is – it seems – always a cause for such a calamity, be that a manufacturing defect or damage caused to the screen during installation. Tempered glass is, of course, effectively under constant tension and a small flaw can spread suddenly and explosively… as we have seen.

Now, of course, we will have to battle to get the screen replaced. Sigh!

I was just very glad that The Girl was not at home – and certainly that she was not in the shower. I am also very glad that I was at home. I don’t go into the en suite (the which is The Girl’s bathroom) except to hoover it – and had I not heard the crash the first we would have known about it was when she arrived home at 11:30pm from Prince George and went into her bathroom to prepare for bed. That would definitely not have been a laughing matter.

Phew!

Tags: Accident, Home, House, Renovation, The Girl

Open to improvement

February 27, 2024 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As we wait for spring to arrive (today the sun shone – then it hailed, whilst the sun still shone – then it clouded over and big fluffy snowflakes started falling. We are now left with what is, I am assured, termed a ‘dusting’!) our thoughts inevitably turn to matters inside the home.

The Girl and I are very fond of our dark-wood furniture – a fair amount of which followed us here from the UK. One ensemble that did not was our rather fine twin pedestal dining room table and matching chairs – the which we acquired here in Victoria from some folks who no longer had room for it. For a reproduction suite it was and is really pretty splendid, with the exception of the rather tasteless fabric with which the chairs had been re-covered. Having lived with this for a couple of years we decided that it was high time to get things upgraded.

As is often the way here in Canada we rapidly established that the perfectionist friend of ours – who did all the difficult painting when we renovated our main floor some years back – was also a wiz at re-upholstering chairs and benches. Cool! She has just completed the task – perfectly as ever – and we thank her most gratefully.

Whilst we were at it we thought we would buy a couple of nice stools for the peninsula between our kitchen and dining room – and a dark-wood plant stand for our over exuberant spider plant.

Anyhow – I thought you might like to see a few photos…

Tags: Friends, Home, House, Photo, Renovation

Looking back

January 19, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Ah! January…

‘Tis the time of year to reflect on the one that has just passed. Did it measure up to our hopes and expectations? Given the state of the world, did we have much in the way of hopes and expectation for it to live up to?

As ever, the best way to find out is to locate the equivalent postings from this time last year and to see exactly what – if anything much – we were hoping for…

…then we can see if any of it actually happened!

…and after that we can repeat the exercise for yet another year!

Hang on a sec while I have a shufti…

OK – here is our basic wish-list from last year – with progress reports in red:

To get to see family and friends – …yes we did… see below!
To be able to entertain again – …there was indeed some entertaining – and not all of it outdoors
To dine out – again – …hoorah! We can once again eat out (and on occasion, somewhat splendidly!)
To see some live theatre – …well, yes.. but not so much in Canada. See below:
To enjoy some live music – …once again – one event only – Barney Bentall’s Cariboo Express in November
To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!) – …sadly not
To be able to travel… anywhere – …well – speaking of which…

In addition:

It is our fervent wish that we get to travel to the UK during the coming summer. Whether or not this happens will depend entirely on the course that the pandemic takes on both sides of the pond over the coming months. We are not holding our collective breaths.

…and this we duly did – emboldened by visits in the spring from good friends in the UK and from an old and most dear friend from New York. The expedition was most enjoyable, even though we did not get to see everyone that we would have liked to have seen. We got to the theatre in London and Bath – we dined splendidly and well – we finished our trip with a lovely sojourn in Paris. The downside? We came back with COVID. Oh well!

We will carry out some further domestic upgrades – air-conditioning to guard against future ‘heat domes’ – a new hot water system so that we can console ourselves with even longer baths when things don’t work out as we would wish.

…well – we did the air-conditioning – and just in time for a hot spell too. An excellent notion which works well. The hot water tank replacement is still on hold – but will get done…

Normalised work! The Girl would like to be able get back out into the wider world and to visit clients face to face again – not to mention paying a nostalgic visit to her office! I would like to teach students who can actually see my face as I do so.

…pretty well normalised as it turns out. The Girl is back doing (somewhat cautious) home visits and going into the office two days a week. Last spring I was teaching in an N95 respirator and a headset (for streaming purposes). Not much fun. By the autumn I was back to face to face teaching without a mask – even though I wore one when around the enclosed bits of campus.

More music! One positive over the last year is that I have been able to write more than enough new songs for the Chanteuse and I to put together another ‘album’. We are currently recording her vocals on these tracks and we are making good progress. Look for further pronouncements in the coming months.

…Last year was indeed a good year in musical terms. The Chanteuse and I finished our third album and at the end of August Anam Danu released ‘Soul Making‘. We were even able to have a lovely reception in our garden to celebrate the release and – for the first time – we played a few tracks from the album live to the assembled friends and supporters. The feedback we have had regarding the music has been overwhelmingly positive and we both have a very real sense of achievement.

So – in spite of all the many troubles in the wider world, 2022 was a good year for The Girl and I. What will we hope to accomplish in 2023?… Check back in a few posts’ time to find out.

Tags: Anam Danu, Music, New Year, Renovation, teaching, The Girl, Travel, work

That time of year

January 16, 2022 in Life as we know it | Permalink

It is that time of year when I customarily release into the wild a couple of postings – one looking back to the year recently ended and the other looking forward to that just beginning. This is a device that I use to measure the accomplishments of the past twelve months against the aims that were set out in the equivalent missives of a year ago – before setting new targets for the year ahead.

In the light of all that has happened over the last two years (most of which has been completely without our control) I have decided to write but a single post this year. This reflects the fact that the pandemic has prevented us from doing many of the things that we would have like to have done, whilst also rendering pointless the pursuit of many flights of fancy in an era which promises to continue to be as uncertain as it has proved thus far.

Here was our basic wish-list from last January – with progress reports in red:

To get to see family and friends – face to face! – Well – we did manage some, but always with the now usual restrictions
To be able to entertain again – just a couple of (admittedly most pleasant) summer occasions in the garden
To dine out – again – just a couple of times and with the now customary precautions
To see some live theatre – nothing! – zilch! – zip!…
To enjoy some live music – one event only – Barney Bentall’s Cariboo Express in November
To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!) – you are – as they say – having a laugh!
To be able to travel… anywhere – a fraught over-nighter in Kamloops and four nights in Vancouver!…

You might be able to detect the tone of disappointment in my words…

In addition – this time last year I mooted the idea of carrying out some major renovations to our basement. That idea – apart from some relatively minor upgrades (replacing the remaining windows – replacing the alarm system – purchasing a new TV) were killed off by the ridiculous hike in the costs of building materials caused by pandemic-related shortages.

“But what of 2022?” – I hear you cry. Well – let us start out with the same list as last year – and see if we can do any better this time around.

In addition:

It is our fervent wish that we get to travel to the UK during the coming summer. Whether or not this happens will depend entirely on the course that the pandemic takes on both sides of the pond over the coming months. We are not holding our collective breaths.
We will carry out some further domestic upgrades – air-conditioning to guard against future ‘heat domes’ – a new hot water system so that we can console ourselves with even longer baths when things don’t work out as we would wish.
Normalised work! The Girl would like to be able get back out into the wider world and to visit clients face to face again – not to mention paying a nostalgic visit to her office! I would like to teach students who can actually see my face as I do so.
More music! One positive over the last year is that I have been able to write more than enough new songs for the Chanteuse and I to put together another ‘album’. We are currently recording her vocals on these tracks and we are making good progress. Look for further pronouncements in the coming months.

In general – we both hope that 2022 at least starts to see a (safe) return to some sort of normal.

We wish the same for all gentle readers also…

Tags: Music, New Year, Renovation, teaching, Travel, work

Dreaming and doing

September 6, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.”

Bono

Bono is not wrong, of course, and it is little short of a miracle that what – when I started writing and playing way back in the very early seventies – would once have required a lot of money on studio fees and equipment and such, can now be achieved with a simple electronic device to which a great many people have access.

That having been said, musicians (and other creatives) tend to be restless souls – always stretching themselves and grasping at some notion of perfection that is, by definition, well out of reach.

This is by way of admitting that the splendid new window was not all that was added to my little studio over the summer – and that the round of domestic improvements on which I commented in my last post also included some other tweaks inside the studio itself.

This is what it looked like when I first set it up:

…and this is what it looks like now:

Quite apart from there now being rather more ‘stuff’ in the room than there was before – and not to ignore the splendid new rug – there are now several more layers of acoustic treatment (bass traps and suchlike) in an attempt to contain some of the wilder room nodes and to achieve something like the flat response that makes for a good recording studio.

The main reason for these endeavours, of course, is to enable us to record the Chanteuse’s voice in all its glory in the best possible environment – now that we can finally work together in the same space again. We don’t have a vocal booth, but we do have a vocal ‘corner’:

This is what it looks like from the Chanteuse’s angle:

We don’t normally record her with multiple microphones but we were carrying out some comparative tests in our endless search for the perfect sound.

We look forward to sharing the results!

Tags: Music, Renovation, Studio

Get’n ‘er done!

September 2, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not”.

Bill Gates

Gentle readers may recall – should they have little better to do – that much earlier in the year all the talk in this forum was of major renovations to the basement of our splendid peninsula home. Some of those readers may well have already stayed with us in our basement and they might well concur that a little improvement would not go amiss.

The details of our thinking in this regard were first outlined in my usual annual ‘looking ahead‘ post way back in January. Sadly this later update – posted during May – gives chapter and verse as to how and why those earlier plans went up in smoke, largely as a result of the iniquitous increase in the price of raw materials – fueled by the pandemic – which saw the cost of our proposed refurbishment more than double.

At the time of writing prices have fallen back slightly but it is clearly going to be some time before they revert to sensible levels – assuming that they ever so do.

All was not entirely lost, however. Though even our stripped back renovation proposal was outwith any price we were prepared to pay, we have been effecting some more minor – but none the less important – home improvements throughout the summer.

As part of our major rebuild back in 2017 we replaced all bar three of our windows and sliders (patio doors). The reason that we did not do the last few was that we were at the time perilously close to exhausting our budget. Anyway – the long and the short of it is that they have all now been done, including this rather splendid new casement for my studio:

That should keep things a little warmer during the winter months!

We also finally lost our patience with our alarm system. Most houses here have such systems, not only for security purposes but also for the all important fire safety (these are mostly wood-framed houses after all). We inherited the contract for the old system when we purchased the property and it has been exhibiting the usual signs of technology that is about to expire – all manner of chirps and klaxons going off in the middle of the night as sensors fail.

The provider of this ailing system is based in the US rather than being local (the which would have been our preferred choice) and their call centre distinctly gives the impression of being somewhere even further south than that. I got fed up with spending hours on the phone to a foreign country whilst a most helpful but hard to comprehend operative tried to diagnose the problem without being able to see what was going on.

Enough was enough – we switched to a local company and they came and installed lots of shiny new hardware (at the same time covering our estate liberally with stickers and signs announcing that they are the new incumbents in the alarm system stakes).

So far – so good!

Finally – The Girl has long been advocating for our shop (garden shed, for UK readers) to be given a new coat of paint. Following the repainting of the exterior of the house last year we had a fair bit of each colour paint left and it was a no-brainer to give the shed a colour-coordinated update.

This has duly been done and very nice it looks too:

Tags: House, Money, plans, Renovation

Punched in the mouth!

May 12, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”

Mike Tyson

I promised in my last post that would I bring the gentle reader up to date with our progress with regard to the plans and resolutions that I boldly (or not-so-boldly) outlined in my customary start-of-the-year posting way back in January (different month – same lock-down!).

The observations that I made concerning work have panned out exactly as predicted: The Girl is working mostly from home and – though I didn’t teach during the winter term – I am currently in the early stages of a condensed version of the course that I taught last fall. Apart from being somewhat frenetic (since fourteen weeks worth of material is compressed into seven weeks) it seems to be going reasonably well thus far. Frankly the coursework delivery itself is not much of an issue. Doing the marking is more of a struggle.

I posted recently an update on my musical activities, so that just leaves one… big… area to deal with. There it is in the corner of the room… large, grey and with tusks and a trunk!

Given that travel (and much, much else) is currently out of the question we had decided that we would focus this year on carrying out renovations in our basement, to complement that which we did a few years back on the main floor (see pretty much any of my posts from late 2017/early 2018). We engaged a designer to come up with some proposals and contacted our exemplary contractor who did such a wonderful job upstairs and with our deck.

Well – these things all take time but we had hoped that we would be carrying out the desired works about now. We planned to turn the half-bathroom downstairs into a full bathroom – we aimed to replace the kitchenette – we decided to replace any of the windows that had not been done in the earlier project and we had the bright idea of carving out a fitness room from the large but relatively little used downstairs family room. Finally we would make good the remaining spaces and redo the flooring throughout. Although this would have involved a fair bit of work it was nothing compared with the extensive works we had had done back in 2017/18 and we anticipated that a budget of approximately 50% of what we had spent last time would suffice.

What we should have foreseen (particularly as our contractor warned us that this was going to be the case) was that the cost of building materials had not only shot up as a result of shortages arising from the pandemic lock-downs, but that they were continuing so to do. Even thus forewarned his initial estimate for the job came as a serious shock, equaling the figure that we had spent on the entire main-floor renovation a few years back.

Well – we simply don’t have that sort of money and we really don’t feel inclined to borrow at this point in our lives… particularly given the uncertain situation in the wider world.

Having thought long and hard we went back to our contractor with a proposal for a greatly stripped-down project – pretty much just sorting out the bathroom and replacing old windows. When the quote for this lesser work came back it proved still to entail spending a large sum of money and we once again found ourselves reluctant to give the go ahead.

And that is where we currently are. We don’t feel inclined to spend this sort of money on parts of the house that will be used chiefly by visitors from abroad (who knows when we will see any of them again?). There is also considerable uncertainty as to what will happen to material costs once the pandemic recedes. We would be really annoyed if we found that could do the job for significantly less simply by waiting for a year or so.

All of this naturally leaves us feeling somewhat down-hearted. The project had in part been intended as a focus for the year – given that travel was out of the question.

Now we will just have to think of something else.

Tags: House, Money, plans, Renovation

We dreamed it

October 27, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

“I painted it because I dreamed it
because we all dreamed it”

Marie Burdett, The Little Boy and the Painter

I promised some before and after images of the exterior decoration of our lovely house.

Ta-dah!…

Here are some before and after shots (double-click to enlarge):

The stucco colour is still light – we want the house to stay cool in summer – but the colours are much warmer. The woodwork at the front was previously stained but is now a fetching shade of ‘Stonehenge Greige’ (don’t ask – but it’s all the rage!).

More ‘after’ shots:

Tags: Home, House, Photo, Renovation

Decorate your home

September 21, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.

Charles M. Shulz

Just to record that our house-painters have commenced their endeavours. The stucco, siding, doors and trim of our humble(ish) abode are getting a long overdue make-over.

I will naturally post further pictures when they have finished – which should not be too long as a fair bit of the house comprises patio windows (sliders to Canadian folk).

I may even post some before/after shots if I can locate suitable ‘pre’-pictures (said he, revealing a total lack of forethought or planning!)

Sadly it was ever thus…

Tags: Home, House, Renovation

The other stuff (1)…

August 29, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

In my last post I touched on the busy nature of life right now here on the west coast of Canada. Not complaining of course – many others are way more busy than are we… but then, we are supposed to be retired(ish!).

As is ever the way when one is busy, all sorts of other stuff – and sometimes stuff that has been brewing quietly for quite a while – suddenly takes off just at the least helpful point.

Somebody has a law about this… probably somebody named Murphy – though on reflection that is more about things going wrong. In this case everything is just happening at once. Buses maybe? That is apparently called ‘bus bunching’ – or ‘clumping’ or ‘ convoying’ or ‘piggybacking’ or even ‘ platooning’… Anyway – buses lead one to think too much about the (questionable) prime minister of the UK – and no-one wants to go there!

I digress…

Here are a couple of other things that are currently in progress after extended periods of not so being:

Back in the spring of 2017 our excellent contractor set our renovation project in motion by tearing off the old rotting deck and leaking (and superfluous) sunrooms at the back of our house, before building us – over a seven week period – the splendid new deck that I look out on from here in my studio. If you want to revisit the details of that project – including the many photos that I took at the time – please do navigate your way back in the archives to May/June 2017.

At the end of that first phase of our external and internal renovation our contractor looked at us and said:

“Now all you need to do is to repaint the outside of the house”

The astute reader has already figured where this is going. Yes – more than three years later we are finally about to get the outside of the house painted! We are paying a company to do this because – though I don’t at all mind painting – I do think I am a little old to be clambering up tall ladders on steeply sloping ground. A friend that I visited whilst back in the UK last year had – shortly before that trip – taken a tumble from a ladder in his garden and badly fractured a wrist. I decided that discretion is indeed the better part…

One thing that I did need to do in preparation for the painters’ visit was to remove a large pile of garden waste that had accumulated at one point against the outside basement wall of the house. I would normally have cleared this myself during the year, but the green waste sites were closed for a number of months as a result of the pandemic and I had not got around to catching up. As I also had some other general detritus to be hauled away The Girl kindly found me a local firm who provide just such a service.

The chaps who actually do the business quickly disposed of my general waste and then made a start on the greenery. They were rapidly brought up short by the discovery that a particularly obstreperous colony of wasps had set up home in my now composting pile. Clearance was thus halted for a week whilst I called out a local pest control concern to give the irritating insects their marching orders.

It feels good to be giving lots of work to local companies in these difficult times, but it is also rather annoying when things do not run smoothly, as will be demonstrated by my other example of things that have been much delayed.

For that – however – the gentle reader must await part two of this post…

Tags: Gardens, House, Renovation

Renovation

Synchronicity

Open to improvement

Looking back

That time of year

Dreaming and doing

Get’n ‘er done!

Punched in the mouth!

We dreamed it

Decorate your home

The other stuff (1)…

Featured Image

Musings

Categories

Recent Comments

Archives

Blogroll

Visitors since Nov 2016